


Salt

by BlueColoredDreams



Series: Hard to Starboard [3]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Background Relationships, Depression, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Canon, Speculative Piece, Suicide, Thrall - Freeform, spoilers up to ep.67
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 13:09:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11510103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueColoredDreams/pseuds/BlueColoredDreams
Summary: In the worst world, it ends like this:By starting over.





	Salt

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Salt by Bad Suns

They have to drag her away, no… they have to kill her to separate her from the staff, from the Light—and it’s dark, dark, so blissfully dark, and if it has to end, then that’s how it is, and that’s all she needs.

But then, it’s gone in a flash of silver. She didn’t want to leave; she didn’t want to, she didn’t want any of this. She wanted it to be final, she wanted it to be over, she did all of it so it would be _over_ but it’s not. She doesn’t know what happened in Faerun, if they were saved, who lived, who died, only that they killed her to get the Light from her, and now they’re back. But whatever happened to them, whatever happened to that world, it’s gone. They never do return to the same existence twice, and they’re all gone, all of it is gone. 

She falls to her knees and weeps. All of it is gone. Years ago, she would have marveled to see her hands smooth and unwrinkled, would have relished the energy that sat, waiting, under her skin. Would have given it all just to be able to put her robe back on, to be on the deck and surrounded by her friends. All the scars are gone, all the pain is gone, even the whispering in her ears is gone, and its absence claws up her throat like a vice.

“Oh, get over it. It turns out we did you a fucking favor.”

Footsteps, and the slam of the door. Silence, silence except for her, and she wants to be quiet, but she can’t, it’s like all of it escapes her in wails and sobs and she’s choking on herself, hands in her hair and she pulls and pulls and digs her nails in deep.

There’s a hand on her shoulder, just slightly, and she knows it’s Lup and she can’t bear it, can’t even bear to hear her voice, and she digs her fingers into skin.

“Lucretia, why didn’t you—surely you knew it was…”

She looks up and Lup’s face is contorted with pain and confusion and behind her, Barry hovers, looking lost. Davenport is stone-faced and not looking at her, Merle has both hands—flesh, flesh and blood and two eyes again—over his face and Magnus is running his hands through his hair, eyes closed and she can’t.

She can’t, no, not this. Not this again, no more. No more. No more.

She doesn’t even need her wand for the spell, she just pushes her face into her hands and casts, and then it’s dark, so dark, it’s so blissfully dark and peaceful once again.

Sometimes, in the darkness, she gets glimpses of the people they took from her. Was it like this for them, or was it softer than this? Softer that the memories of a woman who lost everything twice over?

They’re all _gone_ , her friends, her second family, her employees—Angus, Carey, Killian, Avi, Lucas and Maureen, and Johann. Her Bureau, the things she built with her own hands, with her sweat and blood and sorrow. All of it, all of it was for nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

All of the deaths they caused, all of those struggles, everything she lay down in the dark rooms of Wonderland. Those ten years she spent alone and aching and the ten years she spent listening to the voice in her head, fighting against it when it got too loud, too insistent. The ten years she spent building and planning and taking care of them. Ten years of grief, ten years of building something to last.

Angus and his books and his little notebook. Gone. Maureen and Lucas’ lab, where she’d lived before the base was finished, gone. The glittering lights of Neverwinter under her feet in her room, warm hundreds of feet below like a snow globe, gone, just gone. All of it, all of it, all of it, just gone.

For all they wanted a home, they were too quick to abandon it.

The voices against her ears, soft and sweet that held her through it are gone too, the reassurances in her mind those ten years, the beautiful future they’d painted for her are gone.

They were supposed to be done with this, they were supposed to be safe, they were supposed to… at least understand what happened and why, at least concede that it wasn’t working… but no… they’re still—

She comes back to in a flash of silver and the light hurts her, being alive hurts her, she wants to be done, she wants to be over, because she failed. She failed. She failed.

Lup and Barry hold her back, and there’s something keeping her from using magic. She curls into a ball on the deck, refusing food and water, and in her last weak moments, she hears his voice again and it hurts worse than just sitting there, _just blast her, it’s been a week she’s not gonna come back from that, then she’s gone and we don’t have to clean up_ _again_.

Lup cries then, both at the lasting bitterness of her brother and the reality of it, that yes, it’s almost over. Lup holds her close and she goes limp in her arms, listening as Lup both curses her for all she’s done and begs her, _don’t do this please stop doing this and listen to us I know it’s hard, you’re still under the thrall, you have to give it time, please, Lucy, last it out, last it out, for me; if I’m not enough, do it for them, back there, there’s gotta be something like hope, you fucking selfish piece of—_ and it’s dark again.

The next year she runs as soon as she’s reformed, ducks past them all, so she won’t be force-fed, kept in some magic-dampening field, anything to get away before the Light falls, and in the dark, she stumbles into the lair of something large and dark with sharp, sharp claws and acid saliva and it hurts but not as much as it hurts being there.

 And again, and Davenport’s voice cuts her harder than the beast in the last world: “Hold her down.”

She’s bound before she can react, arms tied back behind her back so she can’t cast, legs looped together, and her mouth full of shining spelled rope, head tipped back to look at them all.

“That’s not… that’s overkill, don’t you think? All of that, it’s not _necessary_ —” Lup’s grabbing Taako’s arm, forcing his wand down; “It’s just Lucretia, not some monster—this isn’t necessary!”

“Yeah it is,” Taako snaps back at Lup. “We can’t do shit if she’s dead.”

They turn their backs and begin to murmur amongst themselves, and they’re going to do it again, but it didn’t work! It didn’t work and please don’t make her do it again, please. Please. Please.

They levitate her to her old quarters, dusty and empty of everything except her bed and a desk that’s bare save for the large draft of the Bulwark Staff and she retches against her gag. Lup touches her face.

“We’ll do it differently this time, and… once it’s done, it’s… if you—I think that if you just… we’ve been working with trying to… mitigate the worst of the thrall and, Lucy, if you just… This time is _different_.”

Her hands shake against her jaw, and in another lifetime, Lucretia remembers their positions being switched, but she’s burned out, she’s empty, she gave all she had and there’s nothing left. She’s a shell, her heart and soul back on the world they destroyed, leeched away by fruitless efforts and channeled into the staff and siphoned away to protect all those people who looked to her for direction. All those people she failed.

She leaves only when Barry comes to tug her away, his eyes down and away from them both, and then Lucretia begins to struggle. No one bothers to keep watch on her, thinking the spell was too well done; or maybe someone does check up on her, but by the time they do, she’s worked her way free, tied the ropes back up and stepped off her bed and it’s done done done done no more no more don’t make her don’t make her let her be done let me be done let me be done—!

Again. Again. Again.

They get smarter each time, each time it’s a little harder to wriggle free before the Light comes down, and then one year, they make her do it. Barry uses Command on her before she has the chance to resist, and it’s Faerun all over again. Her staff is twisted and gnarled and worn down into driftwood like her heart.

They rip it from her hands the very second it’s finished, but it’s too late, she heard it and it was familiar and coaxing and it knows and remembers her— ** _this time it’ll be different, you learned from before, you can save them all again_.  _They’ll love you again and you can protect them from this endlessness, have a home again, have a place to be._**

She recognizes it for what it is because Lup was right after all—all she needed was time to burn out the rest of the effects that burned inside of her, and maybe in time, she’d grow back in the field of ash that was her soul. She’d grow and bud back into the person she was before the Light, back into a place in her family. She resists the urge to sneak from her room and try to find it, from the urge to fight tooth and nail when they pulled it from her grasp.

But her time in the dark has taught her what she suspected about herself all along: she is weak to the idea of power, weak to the temptation that it offers her. She will crumble at the first signs of pain on her loves’ faces, and she will succumb again, a shell of a person to the thrall of those things, and she will waste away before it.

So, for the first time since Faerun, she picks up a pen, and in a shaky hand, she writes what she knows—it’s just a simple thing, just an _I’m so sorry it’s so loud and it calls me and I can’t bear it again,_ and then, she’s done.

Maybe this time, she can finally rest. Maybe this time, she’ll get to go home, her home in the clouds with its silver and glass and the people she’d wanted to save so badly.

This world has an ocean, and the ship is set nearby, and she walks out into the surf and into horizon where there are two moons. One real, and one fake, a reflection on the unbroken sea. 

Maybe the problem that first time was that she didn’t let them stay gone, that she pulled them back despite knowing she would never be absolved. She wanted so badly… and nothing, nothing had come of it. Maybe if she stays gone, gone for good, gone for real, the others will finally, finally move on. Maybe in time, they would have anyway. She doesn’t know.

And it is dark.

**Author's Note:**

> I hate this but it's like, my partner and I were discussing the thrall theory and like the irony of Davenport wanting to bust off of the world when two of the team are actively threatening to kill/hurt Lucretia and like, how absolutely shattered she'd be if they had to restart it all over again. It's only like, half my fault???????? Thank god the chance of this happening is less than absolute zero??????????  
> 


End file.
